Brian On Kawara is one awesome artist.
His on-going project of date paintings are a record of time and life but it uses nothing personal. One morning he wakes up and says, “today I will paint.” He proceeds to paint the date of the current day. If he doesn’t finish it by the end of the day then he throws the painting away. These paintings record his life without involving his life- it only has the date. There is no element of the day- just the date.
The paintings weren’t all the same either. Some were painted in red and if he was in a different country that wrote the date differently than what we are accustomed to, he would write the date in their form. Most of these were made in the late 60′s and early 70′s and show how art no longer depended on being visual. Which is like a “Woah, how can art not be visual?” kind-of-thing. It’s something simply about vision and you look at how something becomes visual. Deep stuff.
Bess Orwasher Examples of Presence/Absence Art
Lead Pencil Studio's Non-Sign II: Thousands of small stainless steel rods connected together to draw your attention back to the landscape through the use of negative space. The artists behind these works of art are Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo.
The link below is to a piece by Marc Garret entitled " Distant." The work is a form of Net Art that questions our relationship with images. http://www.furtherfield.org/mgarrett/distant/
This a poster by the graphic design firm ORK.
1. Hirshorn Sculpture
I photographed this piece at the Hirshorn Museum in DC last year. From one side of the piece, you get the sense that it is hollow, and the blackness seems to go on forever. As you walk towards the front view of the piece, You can only see purple and now it seems as if the hole is very shallow.
2.Graffiti art and negative space destruction art in Beijing, by Zhang Dali
Presence Absence Examples
This is a work of Robbie Rowlands, in which he cut away a section of the wall and floor and proceeds to transform it into a 3D piece in the middle of the room. The contrast between what is expected but missing (the wall and floorboard strip) and what is added (the curled section) is quite noticeable.
This is a work by Matt Lee, in which he adds a decontextualized black shape to a picture of small buildings on what looks to be a roof. He has other pictures as well (http://www.matt-lee.com/index.php?/select-projects/presence-of-absence/). The nature of the the black shape leaves its meaning up to the interpretation of the viewer.
Open - Tom Friedman
(submitted by Sam Giagtzoglou)
Floating Logos - Matt Siber
Matt Siber, who did the series where he removed text from photos, also did a series of artwork where he removed the poles holding signs up, making it look like the signs are floating in the air
This is a piece by Stefan Bruggemann. He has a series of pieces centering around the word "nothing". In this piece, "(nothing)" is present on the left, whereas the stencil of "(nothing)" on the right appears to be absent.
Lacan Mirror stage
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On Kawara is one awesome artist.
His on-going project of date paintings are a record of time and life but it uses nothing personal. One morning he wakes up and says, “today I will paint.” He proceeds to paint the date of the current day. If he doesn’t finish it by the end of the day then he throws the painting away. These paintings record his life without involving his life- it only has the date. There is no element of the day- just the date.
The paintings weren’t all the same either. Some were painted in red and if he was in a different country that wrote the date differently than what we are accustomed to, he would write the date in their form. Most of these were made in the late 60′s and early 70′s and show how art no longer depended on being visual. Which is like a “Woah, how can art not be visual?” kind-of-thing. It’s something simply about vision and you look at how something becomes visual. Deep stuff.
Bess Orwasher Examples of Presence/Absence Art
Lead Pencil Studio's Non-Sign II: Thousands of small stainless steel rods connected together to draw your attention back to the landscape through the use of negative space. The artists behind these works of art are Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo.
Creation:
Installing Non-Sign II from Ian Gill on Vimeo.
Julianne Barto's Presence and Absence Examples
The link below is to a piece by Marc Garret entitled " Distant." The work is a form of Net Art that questions our relationship with images.
http://www.furtherfield.org/mgarrett/distant/
This a poster by the graphic design firm ORK.
1. Hirshorn Sculpture
I photographed this piece at the Hirshorn Museum in DC last year. From one side of the piece, you get the sense that it is hollow, and the blackness seems to go on forever.
As you walk towards the front view of the piece, You can only see purple and now it seems as if the hole is very shallow.
2. Graffiti art and negative space destruction art in Beijing, by Zhang Dali
Presence Absence Examples
This is a work of Robbie Rowlands, in which he cut away a section of the wall and floor and proceeds to transform it into a 3D piece in the middle of the room. The contrast between what is expected but missing (the wall and floorboard strip) and what is added (the curled section) is quite noticeable.
This is a work by Matt Lee, in which he adds a decontextualized black shape to a picture of small buildings on what looks to be a roof. He has other pictures as well (http://www.matt-lee.com/index.php?/select-projects/presence-of-absence/). The nature of the the black shape leaves its meaning up to the interpretation of the viewer.
Open - Tom Friedman
(submitted by Sam Giagtzoglou)
Floating Logos - Matt Siber
Matt Siber, who did the series where he removed text from photos, also did a series of artwork where he removed the poles holding signs up, making it look like the signs are floating in the air
This is a piece by Stefan Bruggemann. He has a series of pieces centering around the word "nothing". In this piece, "(nothing)" is present on the left, whereas the stencil of "(nothing)" on the right appears to be absent.